What is this burst of fruity flavor?

Kat and I had an adventure today. Shocked? I thought not.

Yesterday, at the Transport College, Margarita (the professor) invited Kat and me to her house for lunch. She lives in the very next building over from me, so the journey to her building -should- have taken only 2.4 minutes. However...

The set-up of the apartment buildings looks straightforward, but do not be fooled, friends: it's not. I live in a long brick building that is in the middle of a series of three parallel buildings. Margarita lives in the first building of the three. After class yesterday, she gave me directions and drew me a map to her apartment. These were the instructions: entrance #5, apartment #49. Sounds easy, right? Well, we went to entrance #5, and found apartment #49. We rang the bell (which sounded like a ref's whistle, by the way). W.a.i.t. Ring again. More waiting. Call her cell phone. Have a VERY confusing conversation about being in the wrong place. Kat and I exchange puzzled looks.

We went back outside the building and checked the entrance number. Yep. It's number 5. Margarita told me that her entrance was across from a picture of a lion (or something along those lines). We just started walking down the length of the building. After a minute, I figured out the situation: the building is one continuous building with entrance numbers starting at one...until you get to the FIRST entrance #5. At this point, the entrance numbers don't continue with #6- they start over with #1. Weird, right? So, we had to go to the second entrance #5.

We finally arrived and were given a tour of the apartment. It is a VERY nice apartment. We oohed and aahed and admired her book collection of many colors. For lunch, we did not have Ukrainian food. Why, you may ask? I'll tell you.

Margarita was born in Uzbekistan. She lived there until after her college graduation. So, the food that we ate today was Uzbeki food.

Uzbekistan. It's located in central Asia and was a part of the Soviet Union. It has European/Slavic and Asian influences. They speak Uzbek but also Russian.

The menu:
1. roasted eggplant, onion, and red pepper salad.
2. garlic and curry chicken
3. samsa: a bread "pocket" stuffed with seasoned pumpkin.

So, I snagged this picture from the internet. This is samsa.

4. plov: rice, carrots, pork, and white raisins. Now, for the record, plov is also a Ukrainian dish (just prepared a little differently).

Yeah...I got this from the internet, too. I didn't take pictures of our actual lunch.

5. dessert: apple-cinnamon cake, chocolate candy, and tea. Really hot tea, by the way.

We spent time perusing her pictures from the two trips she took to Israel (her family is Jewish and one of her brothers immigrated to Israel many years ago). Her grandson, Peter, was also there for lunch. He was pretty shy to speak ze Engleesh, so our conversation with him was limited. I tried to make him feel better by using a few of my most rusty Russian phrases. He smiled and chuckled politely, but it didn't seem to help very much.

We had a really great time visiting with them. It was such a neat experience. I'll have to return the favor and make American food for her sometime.

On the way home, Kat and I were beginning to feel the effects of approximately 1000 lbs of Uzbeki food. Kat doesn't particularly care for carrots, and plov is chock full of them. I was commending her on being brave and getting all of the HUGE serving down (Margarita was quite liberal with portions). Kat said that it wasn't too bad, but she did spend some time pondering over the interesting flavor combinations.

"I was just eating away and then all of a sudden thought, 'What is this burst of fruity flavor?'" We both died laughing at that. We have since been immobile because of the massive quantities of food we consumed. It was good, but now we can't move...or breathe...groan...